Mental Magic
by TAFKAF
Summary: T'dal Thorn is the best predictor under the world. What can she and an attitudinal techie centaur do to rescue Artemis Fowl from kidnappers?
1. Kidnapped!

A/N: Hello readers—there have to be SOME of you! This is a random Artemis Fowl fanfic, but it centers around the People. One of the People in particular.

***

I'm T'dal Thorn…well, my full name is Tiria Ridal Thorn, but that name is too long for a two-foot-tall fairy. So it's T'dal (Ti-dahl). An elf.

Who am I really? T'dal, the little elf-girl who lives in Upper Haven, best predictor under the world. Despite being only forty years old—the equivalent of around fifteen in human ages.

Someone came to me with an interesting question about a year ago… "Will Artemis Fowl return?"

That, naturally, aroused my curiosity…Fowl is well known among the People. Especially those under Ireland, where I am.

"I cannot go on such little information as that," I said professionally, fixing this redheaded elf wearing an LEP badge and nametag with my coolest gaze. "Fairy may I be, but no mind-reader."

She colored and looked back at me, not flinching. "I am Captain Holly Short of LEPrecon, and if I say to go on that question, you…"

I rolled my eyes. "I know your name, _Captain Short_. Now, the fact remains: do you want a prediction from a beginner? Someone who may be…inaccurate? I detect it's an important matter…I'd give you the right answer, provided that I know exactly what the question is."

The LEPrecon officer glared at me, then sighed. "All right," she said heavily. "What do you need to know?"

I decided NOT to say "everything" like they do in the Mud People films. "As much as you care to give."

She gave it.

Now, I must tell you, as an elf within my first two decades, I look a bit…juvenile. I'm blond and thin, with slanted eyes and a hooked nose. Not pretty. Just childish, and a bit…cute. How I hate the word.

So I have a LEP officer, one who's probably four times my age, in the office, and she spilled everything. Poured out her story, with all the unneeded details. I scribbled the good information, the non-subjective, the opinionless. There were about twenty sentences out of three hundred that fitted the exact criteria, but more tidbits could be added.

I looked over the facts, then the psychological report from that idiot Argon. Well, he's an idiot socially—bullied me a bit during high school—but his work is sound. I had the answer before Captain Short finished her last sentence.

"Yes."

Short blinked. She took a breath and asked, "How?"

I love my job. As professionally as possible without smiling in the least, I said, "Captain, that's a second question. If you'd like to pay me for the second one, I'd answer gladly."

She was going to pitch at me, I swear. Probably the fact that I was a foot shorter than her, and a genius to boot, stopped her.

"D'Arvit…how do you know, then? That's not a prediction question, now is it?" Short asked slyly.

D'Arvit herself. I'd been had. Well, nothing for it but to explain…she might have been on a mission and I could be charged with obstructing an LEP operation.

"Captain, it's basic logic. He got fifteen million dollars of LEP gold and wasn't happy. He got his mother's sanity back and he wasn't happy. He got his father back, the object of his moneymaking, and _wasn't happy_. I read a thought from his mind: it would be much harder to be criminal with both his parents around. Well, that's nearly a dead giveaway. He will return."

Now I was babbling. Do prodigies ever win?

Short smiled, displaying pointed teeth. "Thank you, Miss Thorn. That was…informative." She got up from the chair and turned to leave.

I rocketed out of my seat like I had been sitting on a pin. "And my gold?"

"Oh yes…here." The captain flung a single gold bar my way.

I grabbed her sleeve. "Know how to read?"

Short's eyebrows lowered. "Of course. Now let me leave."

I pointed at the sign on my desk, which clearly said, "PREDICTIONS: FIVE (5) OUNCES GOLD, OR TWO (2) INGOTS."

The LEPrecon officer scowled and handed me another ingot. I smiled, showing off a glistening set of pointed teeth of my own. "Thank you for your business, Captain Short. Have a lovely night," I said, smiling innocently.

She growled something incomprehensible (probably a good thing; I need to preserve my innocent mind…hah…) and strode out of the office with a face like thunder.

***

And that, I thought, would be the extent of my connection to the Fowl cases. Regrettably (hah) it wasn't.

***

Fast forward: Two months later and I was still thinking about Holly Short's visit. Then a centaur made an appointment.

He introduced himself with a firm handshake and the word "Foaly." Aaah…the techie centaur who managed the LEP Ops booth, and a…ahem…"dear friend" from middle school.

"Good aftermid," I said politely, deciding not to ask about the aluminum foil hat between the centaur's horns.

__

(A/N: "Aftermid" is not a typo. As you'll remember, the fairies do everything at night. So I took some liberty and made up a greeting—after-midnight.)

"Same, same. To business…"

I rested my chin in my hand and looked at him. "Your question?"

He shook his head. "Unh-uh. An…interpretation, if you will." He laid a wafer-thin laptop on the desk and pushed it towards me. I opened the minicomputer and checked out the screen—open to the word processor.

DNT PNC THIS IS PLEA.FOWL HAS BEEN KDNPPD & LKS LKE SOME1 UNDRGRND.HLP—BUTLER

I read it twice and looked up at Foaly, disbelief twisting my face. "Interpreted? What do you need interpreted?" I glanced up at the ceiling. "Must I even request payment?"

Foaly scowled. "Well excuuuuse me, you snotty little…ahem…T'dal. I was wondering if it was a lie."

"Elementary, my dear centaur," I said sarcastically. "True." I read the message again. "Don't panic, this is a plea…no, really…"

"Are you gonna help me or not?" the centaur asked angrily.

That actually caught me off-guard. "What?" I…well, I squawked. "I'm sorry, I could have sworn you just asked ME to help you find a Mud Boy who's almost thrown the planet into an interspecies war…twice. I must have misheard…"

Foaly groaned. "No, T'dal, you didn't mishear anything. Fowl's all right—" He scowled at me as I rolled my eyes. "—sometimes. Look, if some fairies did kidnap the little idiot…how the hell would that happen, by the way, his bodyguard's even more paranoid than me, which is saying something…"

"Get on with it," I said icily. "You owe me two ingots already just for your time."

"If some fairies kidnapped the little idiot," Foaly repeated loudly, "we have the chance to turn them in and get a little reward…"

"Why are you asking me?" I hissed. "Foaly, I'm just a precocious little elf when all's said and done, and all you ever cared about in middle school was that I was smaller than everyone else…"

He flushed with anger. "That was almost thirty years ago, come on…and then all I cared about was how to hack into the restricted sites on the Web…"

"Waffling…WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME?"

Foaly slammed a fist on the desk. "You're smart, D'Arvit! You got skills! You actually know left from right!"

"Okay then," I said, settling back. He told me what I wanted to know, so…

"Will you help, then?"

I rolled my eyes. "Hello…um, duh."

"Thanks, T'dal," he said, and put four bars of gold on my desk.

"Sure. Now go back to being the paranoid techie like a good little pony…"

He clopped out of the office obediently. Somehow I had a feeling he'd be coming back.

I tossed the gold into my safe and turned to meet my next customer, a ditzy gnome who wanted to know when she'd meet her true love. Aaah, stuff that I could handle that didn't involve a quadruped with an attitude.

So what about the Fowl case? After the last customer (a young sprite who wanted to know if he would get into the LEP) left around five a.m., Foaly came back.

I was closing up—emptying the safe, locking my desk, shutting down the computer—when the centaur trotted in again. "I'm closed, can't you see that?" I said snappishly, pointing towards the "SORRY—CLOSED" sign on my desk.

"Yeah, but this is special work," Foaly said, shrugging. "I traced the e-mail, and it's from…"

"Fowl Manor?" I interrupted.

Foaly shook his head. "Russia."

I looked up at the ceiling. "Not the radioactive wasteland…"

"Yup, the radioactive wasteland."

I thought for a few seconds. "But that doesn't have much to do with anything, does it? I mean, we want to find Fowl, not the bodyguard."

"Well…" Foaly started. "Well, it might. See, if he's not where he's supposed to be, then that might mean that he was kidnapped, too…"

"And then _Butler's_ kidnappers might be in league with_ Fowl's_ kidnappers…" I said, thinking out loud. Well, it might work.

"That means that someone in Russia knows about the People…" Foaly remarked.

"And that's a danger to us all," I finished. D'Arvit.

"Right."

I rebooted my computer. "Okay then…logic. People who are enemies of the Fowls."

We started up a database on those premises. After nearly an hour, the centaur said, "Time to break a rule."

I glanced up at him. "And that rule would be…what?"

"Using Ops Booth technology for personal projects," Foaly said, shrugging.

A smile started to spread over my face. "No…that's not breaking any rules…"

"How, pray tell," Foaly demanded.

"Well, it's technically an undisclosed crisis…there's a loophole in there, I know it…if anything presents a direct threat to the People, all LEP technology can be used even if it's undisclosed and not passed by the LEP commander. I'm sure Beetroot wouldn't mind," I said slyly.

Foaly clapped his hands once. "You're brilliant. Now let's go."

We saved the file to a disk, and were off.

It was odd walking through Haven that close to daylight. There were a few dance clubs still open, but the streets were deserted except for a few drunks swaggering and staggering into the alleys. Police Plaza was totally devoid of life except for a single light in a third-floor office.

Foaly pointed up at it. "That's Root. Should we inform him?"  
I thought about it. "Well, then we'll be legal…nah."

"Criminal," Foaly said teasingly.

I shrugged. "Come on, pony. We have a little idiot to rescue."

It was nearly eight in the morning by the time we were finished. Both of us were near exhaustion, but Foaly was still working out searches. I didn't pay much attention—it was all techie stuff, and that didn't interest me. I was curled up in one of the swivel chairs, wondering if I could take a day off. In just twelve hours I had to be back at work.

"Nothing, D'Arvit…" Foaly said. "We need more data. I can't conduct a search just on names and a hunch."

"Okay…we'll do some research. Or we alert the LEP and ask if someone could do a physical search of Haven and surrounding…" I said lazily, wishing the pony would shut up so I could fall asleep.

But no.

Foaly turned from the computer. "You're the genius again. We should do that."

"No really. Well, you're the LEP guy, you get to tell Root," I returned. "Foaly, I'm dead on my feet, can I go home?"

He straightened, very suddenly, like someone had just stuck a pin in his tail. "You could look for him by mind! Your prediction magic! Right?"

I shook my head. "No go…I'd need something of Fowl's, and we don't got that." I was soooo tired!

Foaly pulled something off a lower shelf of his desk. It looked like a…D'Arvit…a human's laptop computer.

"Noooo…by all the gods, Foaly…"

Smiling like he was giving me a treat (albeit a poisoned one), he said happily, "Oh but I DO have something of Fowl's. He left his laptop here…I've strangely never gotten around to dismantling it…so you've got your piece! And it was his for a while, I know that…"

I narrowed my eyes. "Look, I'm tired as hell, I have to go to bed or someone's going to be unhappy. You're closest. Would you like to be locked up in here again? Heard that happened last year…"

"That wasn't funny," Foaly said flatly. "Okay fine…if you can't function…go. I expect guilt'll get you in the end. They'll find you in your office, the first customer of the day, and you'll be trying to get mental sendings from a laptop…"

My last comment was, "Shut up, pony." Then I staggered out of LEP headquarters, laptop under my arm. The thing was half my size, darn it.

I was glad my home, my corner of Haven (add an "e" to that and it'd be a major lie) was almost exactly between my office and LEP HQ. It was a little street-level hole in the side of a cliff that's been cut into a bunch of apartments. Mine was marked with a very bright red door, standing slightly out from the others, which were blue, green, or highly polished stainless steel, in the case of a certain paranoid centaur that had to have everything totally secure.

Home was nice, but bed was better. I washed my face quickly and fell straight into bed. Not even bothering to change, or get under the covers, I fell asleep.

Despite Mr. Foaly's dire prediction, the laptop wasn't nagging a single corner of my mind at all. So there, centaur, I thought in my dream.

***

I was up with the twilight, around six—pretty good for me. That was time for a long shower and a real breakfast, and a leisurely walk into the office.

No hard work that day. A lot of cocky sprites, several kind of thick gnomes, and two or three other centaurs. No LEP elves in need of anger management demanding answers, no techies on my back about laptop computers. It was a lot of relaxing, and I made almost forty ingots. A good night's work.

Finished, thank God, by five a.m. So when Foaly came in finally, I was working off the laptop.

It's weird, getting vibes—there's no other word for it—from something. Especially something Mud People-related.

You have to clear your mind of everything except the person and the object. I had been in the goblin siege of downtown Haven of course, but I had never seen Fowl face-to-face. Which makes it a lot harder. Going on what I had heard from everyone though, it was easy enough to cobble the People's feelings about the boy.

_How old would he be? Fourteen? That sounds right…okay, black hair, very pale person, dark blue eyes, cold, calculating, very polished, aristocratic, environmentally conscious, vicious, criminal, intelligent, HIGHLY intelligent…_ I went on listing facts of Fowl in my brain, and after five minutes had the total idea of him. Then I had to go on to this laptop.

It had the feeling of Fowl around it—his aura, I called it. Okay…strong feelings towards the south. South of Haven—I felt around there, at the same time trying to look at a mental map. South of Haven—one of the old chutes? Perhaps…

I was getting a headache from this divided thinking. But _concentrate, T'dal, concentrate! _South, really long way. VERY long. And east, a little.

Where was that? I pulled my mind up to the surface—downtown Paris, France? That was…shoot…that was _Chute_ E37. Famous for the discovery of B'wa Kell and Mud Man contact by none other than Captain Holly Short. This was rich…

Foaly knocked on the office door. I nodded and he came in.

"Did you get anything?" he asked, seeing I was working with the laptop.

I nodded. "France. E37."

The centaur did a double take. "What? Chute E37? Where the B'wa Kell centered operations?"

I nodded again. "Right. But…" I thought. "It seems too easy."

"Too easy?" Foaly said incredulously. "Nothing's too easy. If they feel like laying out a welcome mat, we'll just go along with it and step right over."

"Great metaphor, dear techie. But I've got a gut feeling that something's wrong."

He smirked. "Chalk it up to indigestion, Thorn. I'm going to report to Root now and maybe he'll send out a squad…you coming?"  
I stood and closed the office down finally. "Yeah, fine. You get to carry the machine, though." I forced the laptop at him. "It's half my size."

Foaly took the minicomputer and scowled at me. "That says a lot."

***

A/N: Umm…that's it for now…is it okay??

~ Flamewing

PLEASE review…the pretty blue button wants you to…


	2. Faulty Signal

A/N: Argh…Well, I'm back, after an inexcusable amount of time…sorry about that…

***

Root looked up as we came into his office. He was smoking one of his foul cigars, and working on a computer.

"T'dal! I haven't seen you in ages," he said. "How hard is it, working to answer questions for civilians?"  
"Fine, sir," I replied. "It's actually easier than you might think, for a qualified predictor."

Foaly broke in. "Not to be disrespectful, Your Highness—" Sarcasm dripped from his tone. "—but we can't banter. I've got evidence of a possible connection with the Underground and the Mud Men."

Root narrowed his eyes. "This better be good."

His top techie nodded frantically. "I got an email from Fowl's top gorilla. The big one that took out LEPretrieval One. He says Fowl's been kidnapped by someone underground."

"And," I added, "Foaly traced the email to Russia. Which is exactly where Butler shouldn't be."

The LEP commander blinked. "D'Arvit."

"Precisely."

The centaur said, "T'dal got a reading off Fowl's laptop—I neglected to give it back, you understand—and it said Fowl was in Chute E37. Under Paris."

"Wait a sec," I said quickly. "I never said he was there. The reading pointed that way. But I think that's too easy."

Root, unfortunately, had the same view as Foaly. He laughed at that. "_Too_ easy is impossible."

"I told her that, Commander. But you know young elves these days." Foaly shot me a highly superior look.

My eyes narrowed. "That was uncalled-for, pony."

"I'll get an agent on it. Quit bickering, you two," Root growled. Foaly and I stopped pulling faces and looked back at Root. "T'dal, go home. I'll call you when I need you. Foaly, you stay in Police Plaza." He glared at me. "T'dal, go."

I stood and took the laptop, and bowed elaborately at Root and Foaly. "As you wish, your majesty." Then I left, muttering random curses at them both.

I heard someone laugh behind me.

Okay, so I was stupid and curious. I took the next day off and followed the LEP's agent through the tunnels. You can do that with mind-magic—follow animated things, not just vibes.

No one from Police Plaza had come to my little den, which could be good but was definitely bad. Good thing: Root didn't need any help. Bad thing: I was firmly convinced that he thought I was some civilian kid with unreliable paranormal tendencies and he wouldn't come to me for help anyway.

Call me a conceited idiot, but the damage was done.

Following this agent was boring work. The small pixie space-warped five times to Chute E34, about five klicks from downtown Paris. From there she walked. My mental self hovered behind her, as she moved silently through the tunnels, clinging to the walls and stopping randomly, freezing like she had heard something.

She hadn't, of course—I could still hear, and it was all silence and water dripping somewhere. It was about half an hour before the LEPrecon agent was at the edge of a tunnel level with the ground outside E37's entrance.

The pixie paused there, and I drifted in front of her and got a look at her nametag. _Mida Bell. _She looked tough (despite being a little shy of two feet tall) as she pulled a ray gun—some random model, I don't know about weaponry—from her holster belt and fiddled with the setting. The gun started humming quietly.

Medium rare, perhaps. Root had joked about that repeatedly—before the whaler incident a couple years back. I wasn't sure what happened there, but it sideswiped his sense of humor. Thank the gods.

I swooped out in front of the pixie when she started moving into the cavern, but I couldn't go too far. That was a downside to following something alive—you tethered yourself to someone and had to stay within the tether length.

Bell looked everywhere for signs of Fowl, or any coherent fairy for that matter. She went in the pockets, in the little half-caves. I heard something rustle once, but thought nothing of it.

My agent, as I started calling her, went into the next cave. Something growled then. And I started having a very, very bad feeling. The pixie didn't hear it.

The soft growl was from nearby. I slid around, the next cave over, the next, the—shoot, stupid tether. Bell shifted, and I could go on. Next pocket.

I drew in a breath in my physical body, a hundred klicks away.

Something the size of a rhinoceros, with a few horns and several six-inch talons, an ugly face and an amazingly thick skull, was curled up in that pocket, matted fur quivering.

It lifted its head and snuffled. The tether eased more—Bell walked twenty feet, into her next cave.

I couldn't warn her. I hadn't included voice-control in the spell.

Bell was dead unless she suddenly started hearing things.

She was dead, anyway. No wings to get away on.

Next cave, only ten feet from death. If the magical tether had been visible, it would have curled up on the floor like a docile snake—linking a soul and a soon-to-be-dead LEPrecon agent.

She rounded the corner and stopped. Something froze me in place—I couldn't move if I tried. And I tried, I assure you.

The troll, a young one by its size, looked up. Bell stayed frozen. But no luck—the troll lumbered to its feet and shambled a little closer, pushing tangled dreadlocks out of its eyes. It grunted, snuffling, questioningly. And shuffled forward a few more feet.

Bell's undoing came in the small, fearful moan she uttered, deep in her throat, so soft I could hardly hear it myself. But the troll was another story—if you have little to no eyesight, your hearing improves amazingly.

It struck like lightning. Mida Bell, LEPrecon agent, pixie, and generally well-trained fairy, was dead in seconds, freeing me from the spell that bound me to her. I had been straining to move for the past ten seconds—the sudden release sent me rocketing back, faster than you'd believe, back to my physical body. The first thing I did was retch.

"The idiot!" I whispered hoarsely to an empty room. "Why didn't she shield?"

***

Foaly showed up at my den about ten minutes after. I was curled up in a chair, trying not to cry and trying to get all the facts straight for Root—he'd want to know why his agent wasn't sending back reports.

"T'dal!" he said at the door. "Foaly here. Open up."

I drew my sleeve across my eyes a last time and opened the door. "Mida Bell's dead," I informed him.

"That's what I…what? How'd you know?" he asked incredulously.

I shrugged. "Followed her magically. A troll got her."

"You were watching?"

I nodded.

Foaly said urgently, "You have to come with me to Root. He has to know about this."

"No really," I said sarcastically. "I have a theory."

"What, Fowl's dead?" the centaur asked.

I shook my head. "No. I might have missed another trail under the strong one to E37."

He looked at me quizzically. "Huh?"

"The first signal overrode the backtrack—it's possible they brought Fowl to E37, long enough to leave a mark, then went back a few klicks when they found out about the trolls."

The techie nodded. "Smart. Run it by Root."

"He still thinks I'm a kid," I said. "Like he'd listen. Plus, he's not paranoid. No sense for schemes."

Foaly blinked.

"I just witnessed a troll tearing into an LEP agent, I'm not going to be very pleasant company for a while."

"Was that an apology?" Foaly asked.

"I think."

"Accepted."

I shoved him.

He shoved back. "We have to talk to Root."

I followed him out, locking the door behind me.

Commander Root was chewing on another cigar—so what's new? He told us to sit down and demanded why we were both looking like someone had died.

"Because someone did," Foaly said.

Root's eyes almost popped out of his face. "What?"

"Your agent, Mida Bell," I said. "A troll got her."

He scowled. "That explains things. It didn't happen to spit out the electronics, did it?"

"I didn't stick around," I told him. "Are you insane?"

The LEP commander sat back in his chair again. "Maybe. So nothing on Fowl."

Foaly and I simultaneously shook our heads.

"D'Arvit. Ah, well. T'dal, go home, get some rest, see if you get any other readings. Foaly, you and Holly—Captain Short that is, go see what you can plan."

I could handle that. Rest was a good idea at the moment.

***

After eight hours of sleep, I was feeling a little better. It was almost morning, but I was okay, and now—

Nothing for it. I picked up that infernal lap top and set it on a table, laying one hand on top of it. It took about three minutes to pick up the vibe again—now all I had to do was follow it to the end and then search around for any undercurrents.

Easy enough. A minute later, I concentrated as hard as I could.

Nothing.

No vibes—not back to the laptop, not anywhere out of France. Every trace of Fowl had vanished completely. I, of course, panicked. I had never lost a feeling before, and it was an unpleasant sensation.

Opening my eyes, I looked around my living room, at the laptop on the table, and blinked. Everything was normal.

And it couldn't have been that Fowl had died or something—there would have been a power surge and I would have been thrown out of the link, but the trail would have stayed.

I glared at the stupid Mud People's machine, their pitiful excuse for technology. Stupid humans, stupid Foaly, stupid laptop, stupid Artemis Fowl who was too nosy and greedy and childish for his own good—

Well…I sighed, and tried again. The trail was back, leading an entirely different direction—west-southwest and a very long way. My mental self twisted in exasperation and I followed the vibe, and I added in visuals. I zoomed through a few thousand miles of ocean in a snap, staring at fish and sharks and a human diver who looked rather amazed at seeing a miniature comet sliding around at that kind of depth. A land mass next, kind of small and devoid of fairy life, through more water, and then into a big mass, another continent. And…wow, in this direction…I was under the United States for the first time.

There were a lot of fairies, suddenly. A male elf waved at my light and grinned, like he knew what I was—he was probably another predictor, I decided, another master of mental magic—

SHHWICK. Very suddenly, the trail ended and I choked, several thousand miles away in my den in Haven. Glaring around, I got my bearings and moved back a few feet, relaxing the mental tether around my throat.

I was in the middle of a fairy settlement, and it seriously wasn't safe to be hanging around sending off light like a thousand-watt halogen bulb in the middle of nowhere. Spotting a streetlight, I fled up there and hovered right in front of that source of illumination, so the two lights blended and I wouldn't attract so much attention.

The town was small enough, a little settlement like the suburbs of Haven, a few walls of apartments and three or four streets of small shops and restaurants. There were a lot of fairies walking around, hotshot sprites with their girlfriends, a group of teenage elves window-shopping, a few mothers pushing their young children in small hovercages—it was just like home.

Nowhere could you hide a five-foot Mud Boy, though.

That left me two directions: up and down.

I looked around once more and tried down. Sometimes villages were really multi-level—my mental body sank, through several layers of sediment and bedrock, but I couldn't find any air pockets. It was getting hot—I zoomed back up to the original town.

Suddenly the signal blinked out again and left me even more panicked than before. I opened my eyes and took a few deep breaths, cursing the stupid laptop and all it stood for.

It's amazing, how much someone can hate an inanimate object.

I had a major headache and pushed the laptop away. I'd go back to it later—if I ever wanted to see it again.

***

A/N: I'm really, really sorry for the delay. Everyone's been absolutely wonderful in their reviews. Thank you for reading.

Very sorry for not updating sooner,

Flamewing


	3. Overriding Wire

A/N: Back. And, ugh, is this chapter _short_. I dunno—it seemed okay leaving it where it was…I'll see what you think, and the next chapter WILL be slightly longer.

***

Root called me in the next night, and it was suddenly his turn to look like someone had died—someone like Briar Cudgeon, so Root didn't get to have a go at him before he fried in activated plasma. The LEP commander was absolutely livid.

"If I ever find out you have anything to do with this, T'dal—" he growled threateningly. Then he seemed unable to think of anything worse to say.

"What's wrong?" I demanded. "I didn't have anything to do with whatever it is that you're so up in arms about—kindly enlighten me."

He just threw a folded newspaper at my head. Deciding to get out of the way before he moved on to heavy things like telephones or computer mice, I went outside, holding the newspaper.

It became suddenly very clear as to what had teed off Commander Root.

__

ARTEMIS FOWL KIDNAPPED—

IS IT A FAIRY'S WORK?

Artemis Fowl, Mud Boy teenager and definite adversary of the People, has been reported kidnapped by the Haven LEP. A Haven predictor, prodigy T'dal Thorn, is, as our source remarked, "instrumental" in the retrieval process.

No information has been uncovered besides that. Of course, if you'd like a recap of the past Fowl events (pun intended if you're reading this aloud), by all means read on.

Haven journalists. You gotta love them, with sarcastic remarks that are actually published in the paper.

After the opening paragraphs was just a highly colored recap of the hostage situation of two years ago. I didn't bother with reading it, having gotten all information from a firsthand source—Holly Short.

"Thorn!" Root yelled from his office. I went back in, sighing heavily.

"You read it all?"

"Yes sir," I said. "The entire thing in all its gruesome lies."

He blinked. "Right. As of now, the present Fowl case is absolutely confidential. If you breathe a word, go live under Alaska for a few centuries and maybe I'll talk to you after that."

"And reporters?" I asked. "They'll be swarming. And if I'm right, mentioning my name is illegal—I'm still a minor, supposedly—"

Root shook his head. "Sorry, T'dal. You're in a business, you've got all the rights of an adult."

I hated Haven laws, I decided, right there.

"Well…"

"So you've got no one to sue. And if anyone shoves a microphone in your face, just tell it where to go."

I smiled wearily. "Oh, this'll be fun."

***

Journalists started wandering around Police Plaza, wielding their wafer-thin laptops like they were weapons of mass destruction. Well, if used correctly, the computers _were_. I encountered my first when I was walking back to the office, from my visit with Commander Root.

"Excuse me! Excuse me, reporter coming through! Young elf! Thorn! T'dal!"

I turned towards the voice, like a fool, and found a hyperactive pixie carrying a laptop with _Haven Nightly _splashed across it. My movement seemed to excite her even more—"T'dal! Would you answer some questions for the _Haven Nightly_ newspaper? About your help with the latest Fowl case? How do you feel about being a professional predictor at your young age? How did you get involved with the—"

Deciding to have a bit of fun, I stared at her, and then at the now-open laptop, with the word processor on-screen. If I used enough telekinesis—it'd be a drain, but I'd manage…

Carefully, I pressed each key down with mental energy. Spelling out a rather insulting phrase. By the time the pixie looked at the screen, I was gone through the crowd.

No way am I telling you what I said. I mean, I'm an innocent—not supposed to know things like that—

But the meaning of this is, I got back to work with a pixie stranded in the middle of the Plaza, screeching insults after me. The deluge of screams only ended when the door to the office complex fell closed.

I cleared up my desk, and looked at the schedule for the aftermid. The next appointment was in about two hours—I could do one of two things. Wait around for walk-ins, or leave and work on Fowl's stupid laptop.

"Hey, T'dal," said a friendly voice—no idiot reporters or furious, militant police officers. "Brought you something to work on."

I looked up. Foaly was holding out Fowl's stupid laptop with a smile like he was saving me from deadly boredom.

"How'd you get that?" I demanded. "It was in my apartment the entire time!"

The centaur shrugged. "I got a warlock to summon it. Pretty easy for him. And here you are." He held out the computer again.

Moaning, I took it and put it on the table, in front of my desktop computer. "I'll get on it…" I realized something very, very bad. "Oh shi—shoot."

"What? What's worthy of you almost cursing?"

I sighed. "A warlock used magic on this laptop, correct?"

"Correct," Foaly said, looking mystified. "But what's that got to do with—"

Holding up a hand to motion him silent, I went on, "There's been a spell used on this? And how long did the summoning take? This is imperative, Foaly. Don't be smart-alecky on me now."

He thought about that for a moment and answered, "Okay…the spell took about twenty minutes, from set-up to finish."

I actually did curse then. Rather badly—and magically, enough to immediately rust a picture frame on the wall. "Ohh, this is bad," I added.

"What what what? Tell me what happened!" said Foaly, impatient.

"Twenty minutes of magic is well enough to change the subject of the aura and the trail it leads to," I said, quoting almost directly from the text I had written on mental magic. "Meaning…"

"Meaning?" Foaly asked. "You'll have to tell me—we in the peanut gallery have no idea what you're talking about."

I almost glared, but decided not to—it would take too much energy. "Okay," I said lamely, just for the sake of saying something. "Meaning, I can't tell where Fowl is anymore. The trail I could have gotten now leads to a random warlock. _Why didn't you ask me about that?_"

Foaly looked flabbergasted. "We lost our lead?"

"Not entirely," I admitted. "There's a very fractional chance that if I use up about all the rest of my magic, I can get under the overrunning trail and find Fowl's again. That means I'd have to get about four days off work to recover and do the Ritual and all that."

"But we're not dead yet?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Guess not. Look, would you be really nice and tell Root that progress will be going rather slowly due to a large amount of stupidity on his top techie's part?"

Foaly scowled. "Stupidity? I beg to differ, elf. No one ever informed me of the delicacies of mental magic."

"Okay, fine," I said, glowering right back. "Would you be really nice and tell Root that progress will be going slowly due to lack of communication?"

He nodded. "So you'll be needing a surface visa, right? After you're all finished with finding the trail and everything."

"Right. I'll finish today and take a workweek off—five days to be on the safe side," I said. "This is a major magic."

"Yeah. I'll go tell him." Halfway to the door, Foaly turned and said, "Kindly don't get yourself killed."

I smiled wryly. "I'll try. Go on, pony."

***

A/N: Yeah. So it's extremely short. I'm sorry…next chapter will be longer, really. Just thought I'd post this before anyone started after my blood. Argh…this isn't moving half as fast as I wanted it to…but anyway. It's here! Kindly leave a review on this weird new site format…

~Flamewing


	4. Sister Dear

A/N: Hmm…well, anyway. Read.

***

Root sent me a very annoyed e-mail after Foaly passed on the news, but I deleted it and went on home, after locking up the office extremely carefully and emptying the bank.

And then, home.

I neatened everything up, first—dusting, making up my bed, organizing drawers. It's sort of like that Mud Men's pop culture thing—feng shui or something. I work better when my surroundings are organized. It's been researched that the Mud Man fad actually does have some merit.

Finally, I settled down on my favorite chair and stuck that gods-blest computer, formerly Fowl's, now mine, with a screwed-up signal. I checked my power reserves—about middling. It had been a year since my last Ritual, but I was okay so far.

"All right," I said, and took a deep breath.

Then I went in.

There was the immediate, strong trail on top—magical trails are like rubber bands, by the way. The closer the subject is, the thicker the strand. It led to some warlock den in a tunnel somewhere. I followed that trail, just to get the headache out of the way, and then tried something new: Pulling the magic back into myself, I traced the trail back to the origin of the computer.

I stopped, opened my eyes. I had significantly more magic, perhaps a month or two's worth, and the overlying trail was _gone_.

"Yes!" I breathed, amazed at myself. It had worked in theory, as explained by a mental magic genius, but I hadn't expected it to be so easy.

Something bucked inside me, like my stomach was riding a horse that wanted me _off_. I jolted forward several inches (no laughing matter when you're two feet tall) and slid off my chair, sitting down hard on the floor. The laptop tipped out of my lap and slammed on the floor.

My stomach jerked again and I doubled over, feeling decidedly sick while sifting through my brain in search of an explanation.

The solution hit me like a hammer. Duh. It was foreign power.

So it _wasn't _that easy. I had a lot of magic from some warlock. I didn't even know what species he was—could be goblin for all I knew.

Furthermore, there was the likely possibility that I was stealing his power, which is a social taboo along with being against the law. I was risking a few millennia up at Howler's Peak.

"Oh, of course," I grumbled. "Go jumping in without looking at the risks. As usual. Real smooth, Thorn." The warlock's power seemed to agree, churning unpleasantly.

First thing was to get the laptop. I was about to summon it but stopped just in time—the spell from my power would result in a trail leading to _myself_, and I didn't need to know where I was at all times, if that makes sense. Probably not. I scooted across the floor and picked up the computer.

The overriding trail was still gone—because I had as good as swallowed it. So the best course of action was to throw up, right? Carefully—I was new at this, and I'd never read of any similar instances—I pictured the warlock's magic as a thread of light, which was going out of me and out of my power snares, and into the laptop, back to its owner…

Opening my eyes and simultaneously concentrating on Fowl's stupid computer, I found the warlock's trail was there, much stronger. Behind it, though, was a sort of itch—a little bit of something, like a length of fine wire in cloth. It caught my brain and I sighed.

The original trail, the one leading to the real quarry, was back. However, I had to—

Darn, this was confusing.

I got up and started pacing, from the fireplace to my bedroom door to the table, all over the room, socks making soft swishing noises on the floor. "All right," I said quietly. "The way the trail got there was that the warlock did a summoning spell, so…if I worked off the spell alone to take out the magic…it wouldn't touch the laptop…"

It was like a game of pick-up sticks, that human game with the bundle of sticks on the floor, and you had to collect them all, one by one, without moving another stick.

"If I worked off the spell alone, deactivated the spell, but put the magic aside and it would make its way back to the warlock, then the laptop would stay here—" I touched the table, where it had been when Foaly had it summoned. "And that wouldn't fool with the auras connected to the computer, because it was just on the location—and if that doesn't work I could just…"

Back to square one. I sat down, on the floor this time, and touched the smooth plastic of the laptop.

Taking a deep breath, I went back in and concentrated on the top trail. _You came from a warlock who summoned you. Stop summoning._

And—the laptop disappeared. I almost toppled, even though it had just been my hand resting on it. Looking around frantically, I spotted the computer on the table, the bottom right corner, one corner unsupported by the wood. Exactly where it had been.

"Oh, Gods," I whispered fervently. "Please…"

I stood slowly, and walked to the table like I was moving through syrup. The auras were apparent from a foot away.

The top trail was _gone_. Completely gone, like it had never been there. Artemis Fowl's lead was up on top, stronger than ever, and pointing east-northeast, down.

_Russia_, some other part of my brain observed. _Where Butler is._

"Oh, gods," I murmured, for the second time in as many minutes. "I did it."

I pulled the laptop off the table and sat there on the floor, and thought. "Next to do is trace the trail, then…mark the place with magic, maybe actually try to summon something from that distance so I can set up a leash extension…" Checking my reserves, I found about six months' worth left of magic, which was enough, I thought, to mentally tail someone.

I collected myself, and went in.

The trail was easy this time, and relatively short. There were quick flickers of fairy settlements, interspersed with dark tunnels and solid earth. One minute later, I glided to a stop near the ceiling of a cavern, where the trail ended.

I turned, trying to take in everything. Let's see, let's see. Some suspicious-looking alcoves and pockets, reminiscent of those in the troll cave near E37. Several were quite large enough to hold a few elves and a fourteen-year-old Mud Boy, who also happened to be rather tall for his age.

Unfortunately, my laptop tracer ended_ right here_, and that was, in theory, exactly where Artemis Fowl should be.

_Bug in the system? No, remember, this is the magical stuff, _not_ the computer. _My mind buzzed with possible reasons, each more foolish than the last.

I had about a hundred feet of movement possible now, stuck to the trail. Making up my mind, I zoomed down and looked closer. I was practically on the ceiling, after all, and it was a high cavern—it was quite a likely possibility that I couldn't see correctly from two hundred feet above the floor.

One hundred feet lower, the floor was as hard and gray and absolutely empty as it had looked. I glared at it angrily. If I could just…

No. Of course I couldn't find him. They had done something to the auras. I didn't know what, but those…criminals knew I was on their trail and had fooled with my magic.

I opened my eyes back in my apartment, and scowled.

"I need a Seer," I told the clock. "Meaning my dear kind sweet beautiful absolutely positively _perfectly sickening_ sister."

***

Yes, it's true. There is another Thorn girl, also with prediction magic, but hers is more refined—rather than specific predictions, like her horrid baby sister (that would be me), Eissandra Thorn, Eissa for short, can find lost items in a trice.

It really bugs me. I mean, Eissa has the looks, the brains, and the really useful talent in the family. Finding things—that's awesome. Predictions just make money.

Maybe I'm a little hard on Eissa. I am smarter than her after all, but people make much more of a fuss over Eissa than they do over me. Compare the short, nerdy, cute precocious elf who can predict the future with the tall, brilliant, beautiful elf who can find things, and you'll see what I mean.

I stood on Eissa's doorstep, smack in the middle of a street under Dublin. _Do I _really_ want to go running to Sissy for help?_ I asked myself. _Well, if you need the help…it doesn't mean you're indebted to her for the rest of your life._

My beloved cynical side replied, _Oh, ha-ha. You know full well Eissa will turn everything around and _make _you indebted to her._

Oh, shut up.

A little harder than strictly necessary, I rapped on the door. Immediately, a very small dragon started yapping. We keep the pygmy variety as pets, you see—well, the ones who don't mind the hyperactive little rats.

"Oh, Pippinsies, is somebody at the door? Clever little boy, telling me right away…who is it? Can you tell?"

I cringed. My sister, unfortunately, was one of those people who didn't mind the hyperactive little rats. She set more store by her dragon Pippin than she would with me.

The yapping stopped briefly, a trill taking its place, and then _rafrafraf _it returned.

Finally, the door opened, and the yaps stopped.

"Oh," said Eissa, dropping the sugar-sweet tone and the smile. "It's you." She said that like I was equal to what Pippin had just dropped on her foyer carpet. The dragon was a relatively recent acquisition, and wasn't really house-trained yet.

"The one and only," I returned cheerfully, immediately kicking myself mentally. Idiot, idiot, IDIOT…that was a movie line, a sick sitcom phrase. I had no idea where my brain filter had gone.

Eissa smiled sourly, eyes narrowed. "Thank the gods. Would you like to come in?"

I nodded. "Yes, please. I've got a business deal to work with you."

Her smile went even more sour, like week-old lemons that had just been doused in vinegar. "Wonderful. This should be good." She turned and stalked down her hallway, leaving me to follow and shut the door myself.

"Kitchen," she said shortly. "You want anything to drink?"

"Nettle smoothie," I answered. "Thank you."

She glanced over her shoulder, shooting me a very thin, but genuine, smile. "Anytime, dear sister of mine." Eissa prepared two smoothies in about thirty seconds, then pulled up a stool. "All right. To business."

"I need a finding," I said lamely. "Like everyone else who comes knocking at your door."

Pippin had followed us to the kitchen, and yipped once in agreement.

Eissa gazed at the small catlike creature, blue eyes filling. "Sweet Pippinsies, you understand what we're saying, don't you? Clever little man…"

I cleared my throat loudly. "I would like you to find something."

"Like everyone, as you said. What is it?"

"Who," I corrected vaguely. "It's a person."  
"A People-person? Or do you mean that Mud creature you've been searching out, according to the Haven Herald?" Eissa demanded shrewdly. "Or was that story a load of rubbish?"

Graciously, I thought, I said, "That article was such trash, not even Pippin would dare get a taste." The stupid reptilian pet had a habit of getting into the disposal cans.

My sister glared. "How _dare _you?"

"I happen to not like dragons," I said dryly. "But anyway. Maybe it wasn't a load of rubbish. It's relatively true, I'm helping the LEP with finding Fowl. Tracked him from a computer of his three times, coming up nil—and believe me, there were no viruses."

She asked, "Is it possible there was an invisibility spell?"

I shook my head. "There's an automatic truth-seeing charm, every time you follow an aura. Didn't you know that?"

"It's not my headache," Eissa retorted. "Why waste brain space?"

I suppose she had a point. "Well, still. There's no chance of an invisibility spell, and I would have sensed a confusion charm, too. Noting on that count either."

"So it's basically assumed that whoever kidnapped him has messed with the laptop. Can they do that?"  
"Yeah, it's hard magic, but—oh, royal crud—no, never mind—"

"Kindly explain?"  
Shaking my head again, I replied, "Nothing, really. I had just suddenly considered something, then dismissed it because I had searched for _him_, not his laptop case or whatever."

Eissa nodded slowly. "I get it. So you want me to use my superior magic to find the little bugger."

"It's not superior!" I said hotly. "You can't track something continually, now can you? As soon as you find him, I'll use the trail of your magic and mark him there and then I'll always be able to see him in a trice, rather than you searching for him…"

She grinned twistedly. "Call it mage's snobbery. You always think your magic is better than anyone else's. Okay. I'll search for him. But I need information."

"Like what?"

"What he's like, duh. Looks, likes, dislikes, intelligence, how he's been brought up…his attitude towards the People might be helpful..."

"Ohh…that's easy. Give me a minute, and I'll thought-transfer."

I composed my thoughts, figuring out what Fowl was, and a minute later nodded. "Ready."

"I am too," Eissa said. "Hands or head?"

"Hands are easier for me."

"Same here, actually," she admitted. With that, she put her hands on the table, palms up. I placed an index finger on each of her palms, and we both closed our eyes.

Thought-transfers aren't exactly difficult—starting them is easy, but ending them is another story. It's relatively hard, trying to stop the flow of thoughts from your brain to the next.

Well, it's not exactly like that. There are computer likenesses that I use a lot—like when you highlight a section of text in a word-processor document. If the text goes on to another page, it's hard to get exactly what you want and nothing more. More often than not, the cursor gets out of control and you end up highlighting the entire thing with your mouse, so you have to backtrack. It takes a while to get it precise.

With considerable care, I thought of everything I knew about Artemis Fowl, and "copied" it. The copy was tied up with a bit of magic and the entire thought bundle went through the connection between hand and fingertip, to Eissa's brain. Her eyes popped open.

"Wow…what'd you do, hack into his personal memoirs?" she breathed. "There's an entire book up here!"

"Um…Holly Short," I told her. "She told me everything. Plus a few hackings into his family records and so on, back when the first thing happened. I was interested!" I said defensively when she gave me a weird look. "You needn't look at me in that tone of voice."

Eissa rolled her eyes. "That made no sense."

"Of course not," I retorted. "But anyway. You've got all your information. Now can you find him, please?"

"Yeah, yeah. Pippinsies, stay here." The dragon stared at her with large purple eyes, pitiful and pleading, but she scowled. Pippin curled into a ball and started moping.

As we left the room, I asked, "Do you ever call him by his proper name? He's Pippin, right?"

Eissa made a scornful sort of tsk. "That little rat answers to anything. Pippin, Pippinsies, Pip, That Creature, Small Rat, Reptile, Mutt…"

"I thought you loved that thing," I said incredulously.

"Of _course_ I love him," she answered. "He's my sweet little Pippinsies. I have to pretend he's been bad for him to obey."

That made some kind of sense, I thought, but as I never had a pet and probably never would, I'd never _really_ understand. Dragons were small, yappy, and left messes. They took money to feed and were generally useless—claws were soft as butter. Their teeth weren't even poisonous. And never did they do anything even remotely entertaining. So really, what was the point?

Eissa had stalked into another room which was much more interesting than the kitchen. The doorway was hung with beads, the walls were painted a shade of dark blue, and there were pillows all over the shag-carpeted floor. Furthermore, a small table between two of the more ornately-decorated pillows held a crystal ball, glowing with a pearly sort of halo and full of whitish fog, on a gold stand.

"Sit there," she said, pointing at a pillow. I obeyed, dropping onto it and immediately scraping my leg on a patch of nasty sequins.

Rubbing at my ankle, I watched Eissa wander around the room, dimming all the lights and somehow turning the bulbs an odd shade of dark pink. She lit a bit of something in a burner that gave off a smoke which made me sneeze. Incense, I guessed.

"You certainly go all out. You don't really need all that, do you?" I demanded.

Eissa glared at me. "Yes, actually, I do. Now shut up. You're disturbing the auras."

Not caring to be quiet, I raised one eyebrow and said, "Oh, I'm sure—you need dark, weird colors, and allergy-aggravating smoke. Right. Furthermore, auras are _my _line of work. You just need a mentality."

My sister's glare intensified. "The dark makes it much easier to see what's going on in the ball. The 'weird colors' help calm me. And the smoke…it…um…" She stuck out her tongue. "Darn you. Smoke has no use, and really neither do colors." Eissa thought. "And sorry for getting into 'your line of work'—I'm used to diddling customers—talks of auras usually makes them feel like it's something real. They're stupid."

I nodded. "Quite true."

"Right. Now that we've finished arguing, I shall commence. Oh, sorry."

"Shut up. You're disturbing the auras." I grinned as Eissa sat down and glowered.

"Shut up yourself." With one last poisonous glare, she closed her eyes and concentrated hard.

The milky fog in the ball condensed into a marble-sized sphere, which began to vibrate frantically. About five seconds later, the sphere exploded and grew to fill the entire ball, pressing up against the glass sides. After another five seconds, the fog went transparent, came back, flickered a few times, then disappeared completely. A picture took its place.

I was watching from the top corner of a black granite cave, sparkling with pieces of quartz, and I could see everything. The sides were almost unnaturally straight and nearly perfectly smooth. It wasn't so big, maybe twenty feet high, and on the cave floor was a motley kind of band.

Four goblins grouped around a fire, licking their eyeballs from time to time and playing poker, it seemed. A handful of elves, six at most, mixed with two pixies, three gnomes, and a lone dwarf, circled another fire, talking and tossing suspicious looks over their shoulders at the goblins. On the floor between them lay a tall (comparatively—he was the size of a tall goblin, which is nothing to sneeze at), skinny Mud Boy. He seemed relatively healthy, well-tended, but unconscious.

"That's Fowl," I whispered. "Wait a bit, Eissa."

She made a sort of affirmative grunt, and I went into my magic. The trail connecting Eissa and Fowl was clear, a whitish string leading off east-northeast and down a few degrees.

I followed it straight, zipping off and trailing the magic. In seven and three-eighths seconds I had moved about a thousand miles.

Even in mental form, I felt the bone-cracking cold, and a mile up, radiation. Middle of Russia, I thought. Figures.

There I was, up in the corner of the cave, near the sheer walls. While there, I carefully examined the others. None of them had an unnaturally large amount of mental magic—meaning they wouldn't see the impossibly small comet that was going over to their illegally-obtained charge.

It was simple enough to slide over to Fowl. On closer inspection, he seemed a little too thin, and a bit too pale. Perhaps being below the ground so much—and he had never gotten much sun anyway. He didn't have any protection against radiation on him, either, which was definitely a factor in his current mediocre health.

Hmm. Well, if I was going to do the Ritual soon, then what would it matter? I laid a spell on him for anti-radiation, which would renew itself over and over as it ran out. It would drain me, but when you're running red-hot it doesn't matter. After that, I marked him with another bit of magic. I'd be able to find him anywhere now.

There. Done. I retreated back to my body and opened my eyes.

"All right, I'm finished," I said to Eissa. "Thanks."  
"Welcome," she returned, actually smiling now. "Anytime."

***

So finally. I had a tracker-thing on Fowl that could _not _be removed.

It took me several minutes to remember why we were so gung-ho about this fourteen-year-old Mud Boy, who had proved himself a worthy adversary on one occasion and a mostly useless brat a year later. Then I figured it out—Butler had sent the e-mail begging for help, and Foaly had capitulated somehow.

Darn that ignorant centaur. Now I had to make a surface trip, and keep tabs on the boy, and find a way to rescue him or something. And then there was the task of searching out the gorilla, finding where the rest of the Fowl household was (Holly Short had told me of his mother and a girl who could be persuaded to be decent). Madam Fowl and Julia or Julianne or something must be found.

Yet another set of variables. Well, crud.

I had a feeling I'd be seeing more than enough of my dear elder sister in the next few weeks.

***

A/N: *goes down on knees* I'm sorry! It's late! Sorry sorry sorry! But there's been marching band and stupid things like sleeping and eating and…but excuses are futile. *stands up, brushes dirt off pants* Reviews are always appreciated…

~Flamewing

Okay, that was garbled. Sorry. It's late and I had a heavy dose of sugar.


End file.
